SAMANTHA MURRAY has an alter ego.

Samantha Murray has revealed her unusual training techniques ahead of the Olympics

Whenever she is relaxing or resting at home, she is Sam, like any normal 26-year-old from Preston, Lancashire.

Yet whenever she pulls on the Team GB vest for modern pentathlon competition, she transforms into somebody completely different.

It’s this metamorphosis that has made her one of the best performers in her world.

Let her explain how it all takes place. “It started before London,” she says. “I noticed I had a real shift in my attitude, which was more of a choice.

“I would approach competitions and leave out parts of my character, like maybe a stroppy side of me, or someone who gets easily offended. I’d move it to one side and embrace part of my personality which I knew were good for me in competition.

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“That’s how I’ve coped and when it’s gone wrong, I’ve kind of blamed it as me letting Samantha – the human with the insecurities, the doubts, the fears – take over.

“When I’ve had a winning day it’s because Olive’s been present throughout the day.”

Bath-based Murray, the silver medallist from the London 2012 Games, is a remarkable individual. She learned Italian after graduating from university in 2013 with a degree in French and politics, and has many interest outside sport. A few months ago she visited a Jordanian refugee camp in Zaatari, just south of the Syrian border.

“There were 150,000 people – elderly, families, children. They have nothing to do. They’re all given water, they’re given food. There is a school for the children, but it’s not compulsory to attend. There’s a hospital there, all run through Unicef,” she says.

“These guys are in a hopeless situation. They’re waiting. Waiting to go home or waiting to have a place in another country. But there’s so many of them they feel like they’re like, ‘We’re just stuck here’. It was an incredible experience to go there.”